Jud Wimhurst: THE GRUDGE. THE MISFIT. THE RESOLUTION.
THE GRUDGE.
THE MISFIT.
THE RESOLUTION.
This body of work explores a number of themes and concepts that are of interest and inspiration to artist JUD Wimhurst – but it all starts with a little drawing, a moment of inspiration, captured in pencil on paper 8 years ago.
“At a time when I was unable to get out into the studio and sculpt because I was busy raising small children I started keeping little sketchbooks around the house and when the kids were napping or happily occupied I would work on these little drawings. I hadn’t been drawing for years and I fell in love (again) with the act of dragging lines around a page carving up the white space. I felt as though for years I had been trying to find a way to combine all of the things I was interested in when making artwork – shapes and forms found in nature and the manufactured world that I was attracted to, design concepts related to repetition, pattern infinity, symmetry, asymmetry, the psychology of seeing and conversation with ones own imagination and intuition and it was all there in these little drawings. This was my visual language.”
“I had never really liked the way I drew, so I sort of just stopped doing it but now I could see the character and personal history evident in my drawings. When I was about nine or ten I was inspired by old comic books that I sourced from a second hand book shop near where my mum and I would go to the local supermarket in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne and for 20 cents I would buy weird old comic books. My favorite ones were Planet Of The Apes, Star Trek and UFO sightings… I didn’t care too much about the stories - I liked the pictures, and I learnt to draw as a kid by copying individual frames that I liked from these weird comic books. Later in life as a teen I found myself inspired to draw again but this time, as a VERY keen skateboarder it was the imagery on skateboard decks that captured my attention. I think that these pivotal times in my life shaped my drawing style.”
“ I thought it would be interesting to explore making a body of work centred around one of my strange little drawings and so I chose this little drawing titled “THE GRUDGE. THE MISFIT. THE RESOLUTION”. The drawing consists of three curious objects that are a sort of “conglomerate” of shapes and forms that are inspired in equal parts by things I’ve noticed in nature and the manufactured world. I feel “THE GRUDGE. THE MISFIT. THE RESOLUTION” is odd yet somehow familiar, abstract yet somehow not, new yet somehow old.”
“As a sculptor the obvious place to start was to attempt to make these little “things” in 3D as stand alone objects but I also wanted to somehow work with the original drawn image. So the next obvious thing to do was to create a large painted version of the image. I decided to paint a faithful enlargement of the little drawing accentuating and embracing the imperfections of the original drawing keeping the immediacy and character of the captured moment of inspiration and imagination intact. It is painted on Perspex to highlight that perfect imperfection.”
“One of the other great inspirations to me is music and I’ve always liked the idea of remixes. I like the idea that just because a creative work is finished it is not necessarily the end for that work and it can be used again as a starting point for another new work and essentially be finished again…and again with no definitive end point. Using the shapes and forms of the original drawing I have visually remixed sections of the images creating repetitive infinite patterns that echo the repetition and patterns of music as paintings.”
- Jud Wimhurst
